Two recent polls give contradictory pictures of the public mood, with one showing support for the war growing and another showing a majority in favor of an immediate withdrawal. Sympathy for dead soldiers, and support for their comrades still in the field, doesn’t necessarily equate to support for the war. And if the casualties continue to mount in the absence of a clear exit strategy, then public pressure to pull the troops out is likely to grow.

However well equipped British forces are, the simple truth is that it’s hard for the government of a modern western democracy to maintain public support for a war when the aims can’t easily be defined and the public doesn’t feel under imminent threat. It’s hard to explain to a public that has an attention span attuned to TV talent contests and reality shows that we’re in this for the long haul. It doesn’t help that much of the information the public gets is filtered and spun by a media whose members are either sympathetic to the mission but professionally cynical about government or fully paid-up lefties who have an aversion to the use of force in general and believe the West brings any terror attacks it suffers upon itself.

It’s true that stabilizing Afghanistan — and even outright victory — will not necessarily make the UK safer; home-grown terrorists are arguably a bigger threat these days than attacks planned in faraway countries. But if Britain and her allies were not in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda would still be using it as a base — both for attacks against the West and in its efforts to destabilize neighboring Pakistan – rather than be holed up in the mountains of Pakistan’s tribal areas being picked off by U.S. predators. Allowing Afghanistan to revert to being a failed state is not an option.

As Bing West makes clear in an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal, progress is being made in Afghanistan. Despite the heavy losses, British commanders are hailing Operation Panther’s Claw — a massive push to drive the Taliban out of the Helmand valley around the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah — as a success; and it’s hoped that the arrival of the 10,000-strong 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade in Helmand will enable British forces to hold ground they take from the Taliban, rather than ceding it back to them. Just as in Iraq, the surge of forces in Afghanistan has led to a spike in casualties. But the Iraq surge turned the tide of that conflict, and if the Afghanistan surge has similar results then the losses, bad as they are, will be considered worthwhile.

Just as in Iraq, if long-term stability is to be brought to Afghanistan alliances will likely have to be made with the less-fanatical local elements of the insurgency. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband raised the prospect of “talks with the Taliban” recently. But any talks will have to be part of a wider effort to expand development efforts, combat corruption, and tackle the drugs trade. And we should only talk from a position of strength, and that means persuading the insurgents that they can’t win, which in turn means killing as many of the hardcore fighters and their leadership as necessary. And in order to do that British forces will need more helicopters, more MRAP (Mine-Resistant, Ambush-Protected) vehicles, and almost certainly more troops.

For all his flaws, Brown is not some scheming monster playing politics with soldiers’ lives. He understands why Britain needs to be in Afghanistan and the consequences of a precipitous retreat. But by no stretch of the imagination is he a wartime leader; rather he’s a politician who finds himself in office during a time of war. He tried to run that war on the cheap, and he got away with it while the death toll was relatively low. But recent developments have exposed the futility of that strategy and the lack of focus at the heart of his administration.

The British public have shown that they’re solidly behind their soldiers, whether or not they agree with the mission. It’s time for Brown and his government to show the same commitment.

Mike McNally is a journalist based in Bath, England. He posts at PJ Tatler and at his own blog Monkey Tennis, and tweets at @notoserfdom. When he's not writing about politics he writes about Photoshop.

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1.
eon

I agree “Crash” Gordon understands why Allied forces are in Afghanistan. I disagree that he approves.

After all, Brown is an old-school Labourite of the type that, thirty years ago, was all in favor of waving the white flag and just giving NATO to the Soviets, in the name of “international socialist brotherhood”. Of course, like his cronies (notably “Red Ken” Livingston), he probably was calculating that he would be one of those running the local area for their new masters in Moscow; after all, they’d need him, wouldn’t they?

In the present context, Brown seems to still believe that this is a war the U.S. started, and that the UK got dragged into. And one he is certain he could have avoided by (a) finding out what the other side wanted first and (b) giving it to them.

(What’s that you say? They want Israel gone, and the West to submit? He’s sure something can be worked out.)

Since he regards himself as “stuck” fighting a war that he personally disapproves of, both in terms of objectives and expenses, it’s not too surprising that Brown chooses to fall back on the standard “progressive” gambits in such situations; namely, to try to get out of the situation by any means necessary, while blaming everyone else for his failures. (After all, he’s just SO much smarter than “everyone else”- in his own opinion.)

In Brown’s behavior today, I suspect both Britons and Americans are seeing the behavior of the Obama administration tomorrow. Since Brown is apparently going to “go first”, there is no reason for the rest to be shy about following the same route.

As for where that route will eventually end, they’ll worry about that tomorrow.

We have Pakistanis openly avowing hate. We have known ME supporters of terror spouting bile at meetings. We give them houses, benefits and protection of the law denied to the white British.
Send that lot of ingrates back, severely limit immigration from Pakistan and get out of Afghanistan.

Michael Yon, who has embedded with british forces in Sangin, has written about the Brits using Russian contractor helicoptors. The problems in Afghanistan are more about getting the US army off it’s butt. Risk aversion and force protection seem to be a mindset that came into force in the 90′s(according to Robert Shultz) and has carried over to things in much of Afghanistan. From my readings(Michael Yon, Robert Kaplan, Free Range International, Aghanistanshrugged, and anything else I can find) Afghanistan is several years behind, in terms of ANP and ANA numbers, than Iraq was at the time of the surge.
God bless the British soldiers and keep them safe.